THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLDThe Old Vic, London SE1Opened 27 September, 2011***

John
Millington Synge wrote his rural Irish characters, such as the Mayo
villagers here, with a keen ear for Gaelic-based locutions allied to a
heightened sense of poeticism which blended words and phrases from
various local idioms with flourishes of his own invention. But he also
wrote with vigour. The Playboy Of The Western World
was always partly a satire, even on its infamously riotous Dublin
première in 1907; indeed, it was the satire that caused the riot. The
combination of this exaggerated, self-conscious language and the baser
notion of the villagers lionising young Christy Mahon for having
apparently killed his father with a blow from a spade was felt as an
affront to Irishness during an upswing of nationalism, and it was felt
so because it was portrayed with vitality.

This
vitality was ably captured in the Galway-based Druid company’s revival,
which toured Britain a couple of years ago, and it is what is far more
often wanting in the present Old Vic production. Nor is this a matter
of an English theatrical sensibility approaching such folksy material
with too much reverence. Director John Crowley is Irish, as are the
vast majority of the actors, among them a scion of the Cusack dynasty
and veteran character actor James Greene. Yet for much of the time the
cast catch the flights of Synge’s dramatic language but fail to keep
its feet on the ground. Ruth Negga is a fine actress, but as shebeen
barmaid Pegeen Mike she at times verges on the ethereal. (Even the word
“shebeen” is pronounced with exaggeration, as if it were a feminine
legume.) Robert Sheehan, in his stage debut as Christy, similarly fails
to animate his character’s amazement at finding his fortunes so
reversed, and Niamh Cusack as the widow Quinn makes her every line
sound serpentine in its insinuations. The most authentic verbal energy
comes from Gary Lydon as Christy’s father, not dead but raging at the
dunt his son gave him on the head.

Philip
Chevron’s inter-scene music performed by the cast also shows verve, as
befits a stalwart of The Pogues, but it feels bolted on. Likewise,
Scott Pask’s complex design seems rooted in a desire to revolve and
truck it at various points rather than a sense of how it can serve the
action. It is a clear production, but leaves one mystified as to what
it was that so fired the Abbey Theatre audience a century ago.